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Resources

Everything here is meant to be used. If you want to find out what your own town is running and hold it to account, this is where to start — whether or not you ever work with us.

Find out what your town already has

Before arguing about surveillance policy, establish the facts. These are the same tools we use.

  • Atlas of Surveillance

    Electronic Frontier Foundation

    A searchable database of surveillance technology deployed by U.S. law-enforcement agencies. Search your city or county to see what has been documented. Coverage is incomplete by design — an absence of results is not proof a technology is absent.

  • Street-Level Surveillance: ALPRs

    Electronic Frontier Foundation

    Plain-language technical background on how license plate reader systems capture, store, and share data. The best starting point if you want to understand the technology before debating it.

  • Institute for Justice

    Institute for Justice

    Civil-liberties litigation and research, including ongoing documentation of ALPR misuse by law-enforcement personnel. Source of the thirty identified stalking incidents we cite.

  • DeFlock

    An independent volunteer project (not affiliated with Unsurveilled)

    Started in October 2024, DeFlock builds tools for finding and recording license plate readers, and maintains a live, zoomable map plus a directory of independent local groups. The camera locations behind our own map come from OpenStreetMap, which is where DeFlock’s contributors record what they find. If you want to explore your area interactively — or add a reader you have spotted — start there.

The law we argue from

Read the primary texts rather than anyone’s characterization of them, ours included.

  • U.S. Constitution, Fourth Amendment

    Constitution Annotated, Library of Congress

    The federal protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, with annotations tracing how courts have interpreted it.

  • Arizona Constitution, Article II, § 8

    Arizona State Legislature

    “No person shall be disturbed in his private affairs, or his home invaded, without authority of law.” Arizona’s own privacy clause, and a possible independent basis for reform separate from the Fourth Amendment.

  • Carpenter v. United States (2018)

    Supreme Court of the United States, via Justia

    Held that police generally need a warrant to obtain historical cell-site records chronicling a person’s movements. Does not resolve ALPRs, but the reasoning about retrospective location tracking is directly relevant.

  • United States v. Jones (2012)

    Supreme Court of the United States, via Justia

    Held that attaching a GPS tracker to a vehicle to monitor its movements is a Fourth Amendment search.

How to request the records yourself

You do not need an organization, a lawyer, or a reason. In Arizona, public records are presumed open, and any person may request them.

  1. Write to the right office. For a city or town, that is usually the City Clerk or Town Clerk. For a county sheriff, it is the agency’s records custodian. Email is normally sufficient.
  2. Be specific about documents, not questions. A records request obtains existing records; it does not compel anyone to answer questions or create a new document. Ask for “the current contract with [vendor]” rather than “how much do you spend on cameras.”
  3. Give a date range so the request is not refused as overly broad.
  4. Ask for electronic copies to avoid per-page copying charges.
  5. Keep a written record of what you asked and when. If a request is denied, ask for the specific legal basis for the denial in writing.

Requests can take weeks. That is normal and not by itself evidence of obstruction.

What to ask for about an ALPR system

This is the checklist we work through for every jurisdiction we research. Copy it.

  • The number and locations of ALPR cameras operated by or for the jurisdiction
  • The vendor, the current contract, and every amendment or renewal
  • Total cost to date and the annual cost going forward
  • The procurement record and every council agenda item, staff report, and vote
  • The data-retention period, in writing
  • The search and audit policy — who may query the database, and on what basis
  • Every outside agency that can access or receive this jurisdiction’s data
  • Whether national or regional data-sharing is enabled, and with whom
  • The number of searches conducted in the last 12 months, and audit logs where obtainable
  • Whether a warrant is required before searching historical data
  • Documented hits, arrests, or recoveries attributed to the system
  • Any documented misuse, policy violation, or resulting discipline

Two of these matter most and are the most often overlooked: who else receives the data, and whether a warrant is required to search it. A system with a short retention period still creates a national searchable record if the data is shared outward the moment it is collected.

Speaking to your council

Council meetings reserve time for public comment, usually with a speaking limit of two or three minutes. Agendas are published in advance on the municipality’s website and are worth watching for procurement items and contract renewals — that is when these decisions actually get made.

A few things we have found work better than others:

  • Ask answerable questions. “How long is this data kept, and which outside agencies can search it?” is harder to deflect than a general objection.
  • Acknowledge what the system is claimed to do. Conceding that a tool has solved crimes costs you nothing and makes the rest of your argument credible.
  • Argue the standard, not the administration. The question is what any future officeholder could do with the database, not whether you trust the current chief.
  • Written comment counts. If speaking in person is not an option, most councils accept written comment that enters the public record.

What we maintain ourselves

Three datasets we keep because nobody else was keeping them in this form. All three are free to cite, quote, and reuse.

  • The Decision Record

    Unsurveilled

    What jurisdictions decided about license plate surveillance — and what happened afterwards. Deployment databases record arrivals; almost none record reversals. If you need to show a council that somewhere comparable already decided this, start here.

  • Documented Harms

    Unsurveilled

    Specific sourced cases where these systems caused real harm, each tagged with how well it is sourced. Built for citing in public comment, not for scrolling.

  • The Map

    Unsurveilled, from OpenStreetMap data (ODbL)

    Every reader volunteers have mapped across the Phoenix East Valley. Useful mainly for the thing a list of numbers cannot do: showing someone the density all at once.

Something missing? If you know a resource that belongs here — or find a link that has gone dead — tell us. We would rather this page be genuinely useful than merely long.